adding blu-ray to my pc question(s)

jtfab75

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i have a hp a6001.uk which i've been upgrading.when in a few weeks i get a blu-ray drive i have a few questions


1. should i keep my old dvd rewriter or just use the blu-ray
2. if i keep the dvd rewriter how do i attach it to the blu-ray and to inside my pc ?
3.will it be a truely great picture from dvi to hdmi ?
4. which is the best blu-ray player (with right software)
thanks
 
1. If you still need to burn data to CD or DVD then it's definitely worth keeping the rewriter.

2. You don't attach it to the blu-ray player, it's completely separate from this. To attach it to your PC you will need a free bay, make sure you have enough power connectors from your PSU, then plug it into your motherboard via the IDE cable.

3. DVI to HMDI gives an excellent picture, but fitting the blu-ray player is the easy bit. The hard bit is installing software player on your PC that plays blu-ray smoothly, then installing the right codec pack. Getting a PC to play blu-ray correctly is not a 5 minute job.

4. which is the best blu-ray player (with right software)
Don't know about the blu-ray player but for software players I'd always go for Media Player Classic as it's free and amazingly flexible, you can configure more or less anything on it and it supports a whole range of renderers.
 
You can get a single unit for Bluray/HD-DVD and DVDRW.
The LG GGC-H20L is available for approx. £80 and is great IMO.
It is SATA only though unless you want an external device and comes with an OEM version of PDVD7 Ultra.
 
1. Do you have two optical drive slots? Are you likely to use two optical drives? Keeping it won't cause any problem if you've got the space for a second but if you're never going to use it then you might as well save the electricity. Most blu-ray drives write DVDs but that's not a problem, although the blu-ray drive may not have lightscribe so if you use that you may wish to keep it.

2. Looking at your specs here it appears your system has two SATA connectors and they're both in use so you'll either have to buy an IDE/PATA blu-ray drive, an IDE to SATA converter or replace the DVD with the blu-ray drive.

3. Only if you've got a truly great TV to display it on.
 
You can get a single unit for Bluray/HD-DVD and DVDRW.
The LG GGC-H20L is available for approx. £80 and is great IMO.
It is SATA only though unless you want an external device and comes with an OEM version of PDVD7 Ultra.

i dont mean to hijack the thread, but this drive was what i was thinking of too.
Is it really as difficult to get it working as nburg said? to quote- "...The hard bit is installing software player on your PC that plays blu-ray smoothly, then installing the right codec pack. Getting a PC to play blu-ray correctly is not a 5 minute job."

Thanks
 
i dont mean to hijack the thread, but this drive was what i was thinking of too.
Is it really as difficult to get it working as nburg said? to quote- "...The hard bit is installing software player on your PC that plays blu-ray smoothly, then installing the right codec pack. Getting a PC to play blu-ray correctly is not a 5 minute job."

Thanks

Agreed. It is not difficult to get it to work but getting it right is a bit more effort.
Ideally you need a fairly recent PC and a recent GPU that supports hardware acceleration.
 
The hard bit is installing software player on your PC that plays blu-ray smoothly, then installing the right codec pack. Getting a PC to play blu-ray correctly is not a 5 minute job."

But you dont need a codec pack with PowerDVD :confused: You just install the software and away you go.

You need a PC which is up to the job (see Cyberlink Advisor)

Ive got the Pioneer BDC202 on my HTPC and it's a good drive and not too noisy.
 
I haven't had much trouble playing back bluray movies on my laptop, so long as I keep letting PowereDVD patch itself. I'll be adding the LG drive to my desktop in a few weeks.
 

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